Custom-Made Vitamins too Good to be True?

Posted 10:44 am Wed September 10, 2008 – Harrisburg, Pa.

Florida doctor Avi Mendelson takes Genewize Life Sciences capsules, a dietary supplement he claims is custom-made to meet a person’s vitamin and nutrient needs based on their DNA.

Mendelson sells the capsules and enthusiastically endorses them.

“There’s a base formula, things that all of us need,” Mendelson said. “However you may need specific help in certain health areas that I don’t and Genewize Life Sciences adds those things to your formula and therefore (you) get a custom formula.”

Customers swab the inside of their mouth and send the sample to a lab for DNA testing. A custom-tailored vitamin and nutrient formula is then created.

Midstate investor Jeff Cox has brought Genewize to Pennsylvania. “(You) here have opportunity to get all of that anti-oxidant, nutrition, vitamins and everything that you actually eat, five different servings of blueberries, raspberries or whatever it might be.”

Genewize is classified as a nutritional supplement and therefore not regulated by the FDA. The company doesn’t claim to cure or prevent diseases, but it does claim to strengthen genetic weaknesses.

Deb Gochenour is a nutritionist for PinnacleHealth. She questions whether the science is sound.

“With all this CSI and NCI shows, DNA is such a buzzword and people are into that high tech stuff, but is it a gimmick?,” she said.

Mendelson says its not a gimmick, it’s the future.

“I’d rather be in the forefront and protect my health to some degree than wait 20-30 years later while diseases are occurring and say, well I should have done that,” he said.

Customers take ten tablets a day; five in the morning and five in the evening. The cost is three dollars a day or about a hundred dollars a month.

That may sound like a lot, but Americans spend billions on nutritional supplements each year.